Back in the early 1960s, when John Hammond Jr. began his performing career, the idea of a white guy singing blues seemed strange to a lot of people. Sure, Jack Teagarden and others had long been singing blues in a jazz context. And Elvis Presley had souped up some Big Boy Crudup and Little Junior Parker blues songs and was credited, by some, with creating rock 'n' roll. Yet it was practically unheard of for a Caucasian to sing and play Mississippi Delta country blues.

Hammond Jr., son of legendary record producer John Hammond - and heading to the Bay Area for this weekend's San Francisco Blues Festival - sure seemed odd to many in the racially mixed audience at the Berkeley Community Theater in 1963, when he made his Bay Area debut as an un-billed guest on a concert featuring blues star Jimmy Reed and gospel singer-guitarist Reverend Gary Davis. Here was this lanky, little-known young white man doing "Cross Road Blues," "32-20 Blues" and other tunes by Robert Johnson, answering his quavering vocal moans with eerie slide-guitar lines. Johnson's archaic blues were largely unfamiliar to most in the Berkeley crowd, and the sight of someone of Hammond's ethnicity performing them made it all the weirder.

He received more than a few boos, but so too did both headliners. Reed was unable to play his trademark harmonica or remember the lyrics to many of his hits; unbeknownst to the audience, he had bitten off the tip of his tongue during an epileptic seizure earlier in the day. Davis was drunk and spent more time telling rambling Bible stories than he did playing his Christian odes. At least Hammond's part of the show was coherent.

LATEST SFGATE VIDEOS

He has come a long way since, with 29 albums to his credit and four decades of near-constant touring. He appeared at the San Francisco Blues Festival in 1982, 1991 and 1996, and returns for the 35th annual edition Sunday for a set with an old friend, harmonica blower Charlie Musselwhite, and a new acquaintance, New Orleans piano great Allen Toussaint. Each musician will perform alone; then all three will play together, backed by Musselwhite's band.

Hammond's race also proved to be a problem at another early point in his career. In 1965, "I Can Tell," a 45 he'd recorded for the Red Bird label in New York City with producers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, became an R&B hit in Pittsburgh. It was threatening to take off nationally, Hammond says, when the company suddenly stopped pushing it.

"The owner of the label, George Goldner, was on the road when we did it, so I hadn't met him," Hammond recalls by telephone. "Jerry and Mike sent it down to him. He loved the record and was promoting it in all these areas. He did not know I was white. When he came back to New York, he just canned the whole thing. He said, 'I can't promote a white artist.' "

The blues bug bit Hammond early in life. He remembers his father taking him to a Big Bill Broonzy concert in 1949, when he was 7. In the mid-'50s he saw Jimmy Reed and Muddy Waters at the Apollo Theater and began attending all-star rock 'n' roll shows hosted by disc jockey Alan Freed. Performers included Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, whose connection to blues the teenager recognized immediately.

Then, in 1959, he heard Johnson's 1936 recording of "Preachin' Blues (Up Jumped the Devil)" on a newly issued multi-artist album titled "The Country Blues."

"It stood out," he says of the song, "and I went on a quest to find other things that he had done." He took up guitar the following year.

Hammond's parents had divorced when he was five. He and his brother were raised in New Jersey by their mother. "We saw our father on occasions," the blues singer says. "I didn't get to know him like everybody assumes I did. He came from another era and another lifestyle, I guess, and it was a little hard for me to relate to him somehow."

John Hammond Sr. was a longtime producer at Columbia Records who is credited with having launched the careers of Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Aretha Franklin, Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, among others. Hammond Jr. would record three albums for Columbia in the early '70s, though he is quick to point out that his dad had nothing to do with getting him the contract.

During a weekend visit in 1959, Hammond Jr. asked his father if he'd ever heard of Johnson. "He looked at me and said, 'Funny you should ask,' " the son recalls. "And then I heard this whole story, and it was mind-boggling." Hammond Sr. had inquired about booking Johnson for his "From Spirituals to Swing" concert at Carnegie Hall in December 1939 but found out that the obscure bluesman been murdered 16 months earlier in Mississippi.

Hammond Sr. played his son four 78 RPM recordings by Johnson that day.

"I was just, like, blown away," Hammond Jr. recalls. "He introduced me to Frank Driggs, head of the archives at Columbia. He made me a tape of 12 Robert Johnson songs. I felt like I'd found gold or something. It was unbelievable."

Hammond Jr. has recorded songs by Johnson, Reed, Waters, Berry, Diddley, Dylan, Waits and many others throughout his prolific career, but only four years ago did he begin writing and recording his own tunes. His latest album, "Push Come to Shove," includes five original compositions.

He credits Marla Hammond, his wife of 14 years, with encouraging him to write his own material. She also assists him in the production of his CDs and other creative matters.

"I'm not a young guy anymore, although I still think I'm 18," says Hammond, 64. "I've had a lot of experience doing things, and I've probably made every mistake you can make, but as a team, I think we have it down."

Latest from the SFGATE homepage:

Click below for the top news from around the Bay Area and beyond. Sign up for our newsletters to be the first to learn about breaking news and more. Go to 'Sign In' and 'Manage Profile' at the top of the page.